Designing Casual Maps Adopting an Intellectual Capital Perspective: A Case Study Analysis

Casual maps are a useful tool by which managers can understand what the key resources in\udtheir organization are and how these resources contribute to the value creation process. The\udaim of this paper is to understand, from an empirical perspective, if, how and why a causal\udmap can be designed grounding on the Intellectual Capital (IC) studies. To achieve this aim a\udcase study has been examined to reply to our research questions.\udThe contribution of this paper to the management accounting literature is twofold. First it\udsuggests a method to improve causal maps by making visible two aspects, time and\udinterconnections, that traditionally overlooked (Marr et al., 2004 Nørreklit, 2000). Second, it\udsystematizes and extends the literature on how to account for time and on the relative\udimportance of the temporal dimension in developing effective strategies.\udThe main findings of the research can be summed up as follows. From a methodological\udpoint of view, the use of multi-method approach in designing a casual map offers the\udopportunity to take into considerations the intensity of the relations and the time lag between\udactivities and effects. Adopting an IC perspective, it emerges that the properties of IC (i.e.\udconnectivity, dynamicity and specificity) have a great impact on the map and the adoption of\udan IC perspective in designing casual maps may be useful to enrich this management tool and\udto better consider the specific properties of IC